Navy Pier on a Chicago Layover
Part of the full Chicago Layover: Millennium Park From ORD
Navy Pier runs 3,300 feet into Lake Michigan off the end of Grand Avenue in Chicago, and walking onto it costs nothing: the Centennial Wheel and the boat docks sit halfway along, the 1916 ballroom dome and a view of the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse are at the far tip, and Milton Lee Olive Park is a few minutes north of the entrance.
The Centennial Wheel and its enclosed gondolas
The wheel opened in May 2016, for the pier’s hundredth year, and stands close to 200 feet. Its 42 gondolas are glassed in and climate controlled, heated in winter and air conditioned in August, which is the detail that matters on a pier where the weather arrives sideways off the water. A ride is three full rotations and about fifteen minutes, for roughly $20, and a ticket bought ahead is worth it on a clear Saturday, when the line at the base is the slow part.
Navy Pier also gives the ride away free on Wednesday evenings after 6pm, with a limited number of tickets released the Thursday before, up to four per reservation. Worth checking on a Wednesday, not worth reorganizing a day around.
The Chicago Harbor Lighthouse out on the breakwater
The pier opened in 1916 as Municipal Pier and took the name Navy Pier in 1927, for the sailors who had trained on it during the First World War. Its far end still carries the original domed ballroom, 18,000 square feet under the dome you can see from the water, though it works as an events venue now rather than something you wander into.
Keep walking past it and you reach the east tip, which is the point of the trip for a lot of people. The white tower with the red roof out on the breakwater is the Chicago Harbor Lighthouse, built in 1893 for the World’s Columbian Exposition and moved to its present spot in 1919. It is still an active navigation light and closed to visitors, so this view, or a boat, is as near as anyone gets.
That is 3,300 feet out and the same back, on open deck with no shortcut partway and the wind coming straight off the lake.
Milton Lee Olive Park, behind the water plant
Most people never turn left. A few minutes north of the pier entrance, on a man-made peninsula tucked against the west side of the Jardine water purification plant, is a park almost nobody walks into by accident. Dan Kiley and Joe Karr laid it out in 1965: five stepped circular fountains of different sizes connected by diagonal paths, lawns set at slightly different levels between them, and an avenue of honey locusts running down to the water’s edge. A deck cantilevers out over the lake halfway along, with black polished granite benches on it and the skyline filling the view northwest.
The city dedicated it in June 1966 to Private First Class Milton Lee Olive III, a Chicagoan who was nineteen when he smothered a grenade with his body in Vietnam and the first African American given the Medal of Honor in that war. Ohio Street Beach is right beside it, which is where the swimmers go.
This half of the afternoon is free, quiet and about twenty minutes of walking. If that sounds better than the pier itself, the free circuit around Millennium Park and the Riverwalk is the same idea again with more to look at.
No train to Navy Pier, just a bus from the Loop
There is no ‘L’ station here and never has been, which catches people out. The 124 bus runs to the pier from Union Station, Ogilvie and Millennium Station; the 29 State, 65 Grand and 66 Chicago come from elsewhere downtown; and the 2 Hyde Park Express only runs weekday rush hours. Walking from the Grand stop on the Red Line takes about twenty minutes, straight east.
Hours are seasonal. Through the summer the pier is open 10am to 10pm Sunday to Thursday, 11pm on Friday and midnight on Saturday, and it closes earlier the rest of the year. Free fireworks go up over the lake on Wednesdays at 9pm and Saturdays at 10pm through the summer season, about ten minutes each, which is the one reason to plan an evening flight around a bus timetable.
Getting back out to O’Hare means a bus or the walk into the Loop first, then the Blue Line from Clark/Lake, about 40 minutes on the train. Add the whole lakefront walk to that and it is a long way to be pushing a suitcase around a pier with one entrance.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an 'L' station at Navy Pier?
No, and there never has been. Five CTA bus routes come here instead: the 124 from Union Station, Ogilvie and Millennium Station, plus the 29 State, 65 Grand and 66 Chicago, and the 2 Hyde Park Express during weekday rush hours. From the Grand stop on the Red Line it is about twenty minutes on foot straight east.
Does it cost anything to go onto Navy Pier?
No. There is no admission fee to walk onto the pier or to sit on the steps at Pier Park, and the whole 3,300-foot length is public. The rides, the boat trips and the museums are ticketed separately, so a visit here can cost nothing at all or about $20 for the wheel, depending on what you stop for.
When are the free fireworks at Navy Pier?
Through the summer season, roughly late May to early September, there are free fireworks over the lake on Wednesdays at 9pm and Saturdays at 10pm. Each show runs about ten minutes. The pier stays open past both, but check the last bus before you plan the evening around it.
Is the Centennial Wheel worth riding in bad weather?
The 42 gondolas are enclosed and climate controlled, with heat in winter and air conditioning in summer, so cold or drizzle is not the problem. Lightning, high wind and extreme cold are: Pier Park rides shut for all three, sometimes at short notice, so it is not something to build a tight schedule around.
Is Navy Pier a good stop with kids?
It is the easiest answer in the city for a few hours with children: the Chicago Children's Museum is in the headhouse at the pier entrance, a carousel and a swing ride run in Pier Park in season, and the wheel is a fifteen-minute sit rather than a line-and-scramble. Nothing here needs a reservation weeks out.